M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I ONAL M O N T H 91
I)sychoanalysis itself, as Lacan turns classical Freudian theory upside down
6 .lI1d inside out to produce a more revolutionary version of it, and thus to
May '68, The Emotional Month
Joan Copjec
Emotions ran high in Paris in May '68, particularly among students in the
universities. Sensing the peril of ignoring the groundswell of emotion, faculty
responded immediately, but variously. Some conservative old fossils
attempted to quash the rebellion, while more liberal-minded, avuncular types
'took to the barricades', casting their lot with the student radicals. Both camps
permitted themselves a little more passion than usual, precisely because
'usual' seemed to have evaporated in the hurly-burly of dissent. In the
upheaval, everything seemed to have been turned upside down and inside
out, including reason, which - suddenly agitated - became clouded with roily
sediment. Less cool-headed and clear, reason became crimson-faced.
The response of Jacques Lacan did not fit, however, into either camp.
Aligning himself neither against nor on the side of the student radicals, he
simply accused them of not being radical enough, of behaving like unwitting
flunkies of the university against which they imagined themselves to be in
revolt. Detecting in their cries a plea for a new Master, he warned that they
were on the verge of getting one. The monitory finger he held in their faces
assumed the form of a year-long seminar, Seminaire XVII: L'envers de la
psychanalyse [The Underside (or Reverse) of PsychoanalysisJ.1 In this seminar
Lacan maintained that although the students wanted to believe they were
abandoning the university for the streets, the university was not so easily
abandoned; it had already begun to take them over - as well as the streets.
Which is why even certain elements of their revolt reflected academic
business as usual.
For the most part, the reversals or upendings referred to in the seminar's
title produce something other than psychoanalysis, another kind of discourse,
namely, that of the Master, the Hysteric, or the University. That is, the specific
operation of 'reversal' referred to in the title is that of the 'quarter-turns' or
rotations which produce the four discourses, of which psychoanalysis is only
one.2 Yet there is also a sense in which the reversal does take place within
redefine the 'analytic discourse' as a new social bond. At the end of the
seminar, this social tie is rendered in a distilled formula that exposes the
I lltimate ambition of the analyst - who, in her impossible role as analyst,
operates on the analysand - as rather unseemly. The final aim of psycho­
.lI1alysis, it turns out, is the production of shame. That which Lacan himself
describes as unmentionable, even improper to speech as such, is mentioned
(and mentioned only) on the threshold of the seminar's close. The seamy
nderside of psychoanalysis, the backside towards which all the twists and
I urns have led, is finally shame: that affect whose very mention brings a blush
1I
10 the face.3 Why is shame given such a place of honour, if we may put it that
way, in the seminar? And what should the position of the analyst be with
respect to it? Should she try to reduce it, get rid of it, lower her eyes before it?
No; Lacan proposes that the analyst make herself the agent of it. Provoke it.
Looking out into the audience gathered in large numbers around him, he
accounts for their presence in his final, closing remarks thus: if you have come
here to listen to what I have to say, it is because I have positioned myself with
respect to you as analyst, that is: as object-cause of your desire. And in this
way I have helped you to feel ashamed. End of seminar.
I want to allow what Lacan is saying to sink in . In response to May '68,
a very emotional month, he ends his seminar, his long warning against the
rampant and misguided emotionalism of the university students, with an
impassioned plea for a display of shame. Curb your impudence, your shame­
lessness, he exhorts, cautioning: you should be ashamed! What effrontery!
What a provocation is this seminar! But then: what are we to make of it?
Because the reference to shame appears so abruptly only in the final session
and without elaboration, this is not an easy question to answer. One hears
echoes of the transferential words of Alcibiades, who has this to say in The
Symposium about Socrates: 'And with this man alone I have an experience
which no one would believe was possible for me - the sense of shame.'4 But to
detect the vibrations of this precedent is a far cry from understanding what to
make of it.
To sort matters out, one looks for hints that might be seen in retrospect to
have been dropped along the way, and might now steer us in the proper
direction. Shame did emerge as a topic of interest in earlier seminars. In
Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, for example, Lacan compared
shame to beauty, noting that the two functioned similarly to mark a limit; and
in Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, in his
discussion of Sartre's scenario of the voyeur at the keyhole, he dwells for a
 M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I ONAL M O N T H 93
92 T H E S I L ENT PART N E R S

time on the phenomenon of shame as if trying to justify Sartre's contention to Freud's critical assertion that only ideas are ever repressed; affect never is.
that it marks the 'birth of the social'. In L' envers, Lacan adjusts that claim !\ ITe et remains on the surface. This does not mean
that repression has no
slightly, arguing that shame marks not the social link as such, but that partiClI­ , -(fect on affect [jouissance1 ; it means, rather, that this effect is something
lar link which analysis is intent on forging. One of the most fruitful paths to "I her than the removal of affect from conscio
usness . The specific effect of
follow, however, is the one laid down by Lacan's remarks on affect, precisely [ cpression on affect is displacement. Affect is always displac ed, or: always out
because an affect is what shame is. , ) 1 place. The question is: in relation to what? The first tempta tion is to
That the return to Freud via Saussurean linguistics was guilty of a disas­ , I nswer: in relation to the signifier or represe ntation . This would mean that
trous neglect of affect was, by May ' 68, not a new charge. Lacan had dealt with representation and affect are out of phase with one anothe r. The proble m
it before, particularly in Seminar X, the seminar on anxiety. But it is not with this answer is that it tends to reinstate the old antino my betwee n
difficult to understand why the charge was resurrected by the students who ;ouissance and the signifier, and to insist finally on the deficit or failure of
confronted him, during the course of this very seminar, on the steps of the representation.
Pantheon. The perceived hyperrationality of the formulas drawn on black­ One way of gaining perspective on this manoeuvre, I suggest, is to takeis,a
boards by their structuralist professors seemed arid and far removed from the brief detour through an essay published by Gilles Deleuze in 1967 passag that
-

turmoil that surrounded them, from the newness of extraordinary events, the hetween the years of Lacan' s XIth and XVIIth semina rs. Consid er this e
violence of police beatings, and from their own inchoate feelings of solidarity [rom that essay:
with the workers. A grumbling sense that something had been left out, that idea
something inevitably escaped these desiccated and timeless structures, was The first effect of Others is that around each object that I perceive or each
or back­
expressed in the renewed demand that Lacan begin redressing the university's that I think there is the organiz ation of a margin al world, a mantle
other ideas may come forth. . . . AtI regard
ground, where other objects andn, letting an
failures by recognizing the importance of affect. They had had it up to their fall into the backgro und. the same
eyeballs with signifiers and all the talk of signifiers, which only left a whole object, then I divert my attentio backgroitund a new object of my attention. If
ar:a of their experience unacknowledged: precisely the fact of their being time, there comes forth from the me, if it does not collide with me with theis
this new object does not injure
agItated, moved by what was happening here and now. violence of a project ile (as when one bumps against something unseen), it
Lacan responded by drawing more formulas on the backboard. But let us at because the first object had already at its disposal a comple te margin where I had
least credit him with this: he bent over backwards to point out that he was not objects
already felt the preexistence ofwhich yet to come, and of an entire field of
simply talking the talk, he was . . . well, he was fitting his structures with feet. virtualities and potenti alities I already knew were capable of being
Indeed, he mentions this over and over: my structures have legs. They do actualized.s
march; they do move, my four-legged creatures. If he keeps repeating this as
joking reference to his four-footed structures, it is not because he is delighted In this description perceptions, or representations, are conceived less by
with his little metaphor, but because it is not a metaphor. The movement in limited than as wrapped in a mantle of indeter minati on; they are fringed
these signifying structures is real, which is how we know they do not ignore something like peripheral vision. A surplus of perception, an indeterminate do
affect, as many had charged. 'more', creates a kind of buffer zone which ensures that perceptionstheir
Affect is included in the formulas of the four discourses. But where? A not simply follow antecedent perceptions, but emerg e smooth ly from
negative answer first: one misses the point if one tries to locate affect - or penumbra. The source of this mantle or surplus is what Deleuze callsofhere the
jouissance, in Lacan's preferred vocabulary - in any of the individual symbols 'the Other'; it is an Other who 'assures the margins and transitions work,
that compose the structure; affect (again, affect) is not to be treated as a local world' and 'fills the world with a benevolent murm uring'. In his later
element that can simply be added to the chain of signifiers like that. This is in Deleuze rebaptizes this benevolent Other with another term, 'affect', and he of
fact what Lacan himself did in his earlier work, when he theorized jouissance will define affect (specifically in the books on cinema) as the participation the side
as an outside discourse. Defining the relation between the signifier and the actual in the virtual and the virtual in t h e actual , as seen from
of the actual thing. In this later work, he will argue t h a t a n actua l ,i mi ndivid ual
jouissance as antinomic, he localized the latter in a beyond. A positive answer
begins by noting that what is new in Seminar XVII is the emphasis Lacan gives perception participates simultaneously in a pre- i n d i v i d u a l or perso nal
 94 T H E S I L ENT PART N E R S
field, just as in the 1967 Tournier essay he claims that it participates in the
field of the Other.
But something changes in the later work, when the Other comes to lw
called affect; to put it succinctly, Deleuze's account becomes less Merleau
Pontyesque. In other words, affect is not quite as 'benevolent' as the Other
was in so far as the claim is no longer that affect serves to confirm th e
existence of a stable world - to guarantee, for example, that the back of
a
house meets up with its front in some consistent way - or to protect the
subject from 'assaults from behind', as Deleuze puts it in his earlier essay. In
that essay, Merleau-Ponty's account of the relation between the gaze and the
visible is invoked as critique of the analysis given by Sartre in Being and
Nothingness; it is as if Deleuze had wanted to overturn Lacan's argument in
Seminar XI, in which Sartre is used against Merleau-Ponty. The later Deleuze
is more 'Sartrean' in the sense that he conceives affect as more disruptive,
more murderous than murmuring; it is less a mantle surrounding perception
than pe�cep�ion's in�e � d�vision, its dislocati �n from itself. While I began by
wondermg If Freud s mSlstence that affect IS always displaced implied an
out-of-phase relation between affect and representation, the present line of
argument suggests that this formulation suffers from an overly sharp
separation of the two terms, a division that antagonizes them. Is not affect,
rather, in this account, representation's own essential 'out-of-phaseness' with
itself? A marginal difference opens up, separating the individual perception
from itself - and it is this difference which is called affect. Not something
adde � to representation or the signifier, but a surplus produced by its very
functIOn, a surplus of the signifier over itself
According to the most common misunderstanding, the displacement
of affect means that perception is liable to distortion whenever a quantum of
affect wanders inappropriately into an otherwise objective field, and burdens
or blocks it with a subjective excess of feeling. This misunderstanding is
skilfully put to rest in Brian Massumi's Deleuzian-inspired analysis of an
experiment in which subjects were instructed to match a colour swatch with
some cherished object about which they were invited to reminisce. Massumi
notes that the subjects in the experiment frequently mismatched the fondly
remembered object with a 'too-blue' swatch. In the common misunder­
standing, the excess of colour would be viewed as a sure sign of the affected
character of the choice in the sense that it would be read as an excess quantity
of feeling, a surplus or addition of personal feeling that would not have been
elicite? had the subject maintained a purely objective relation to the object. If
affect IS understood, however, not as a quantitative but as a qualitative surplus
- that is, if the excessiveness of affect is seen as its opening on to another
M AY ' 6 8, T H E E M O T I O NAL M O N T H 95
d imension (in Deleuze, the virtual) or another register (in Lacan, the Real) -
I he overly saturated colour becomes readable as an indication � f s� methmg
o t her than its limitation, that is, its being only a particular or subjective aspect
rather than a clear and full view of the object, as in: ' To me his eyes seem very
hlue .'
Affect does not familiarize, domesticate or subjectivize - on the contrary, It.
estranges. The cherished memories of the subjects in the. e�periment lose
what Lacan once called 'that belong-to-me-aspect so remmlscent of prop­
erty'. The overly saturated colour is the sign that perception has begun to
overspill the narrow grooves of the associations or recollections that o�ce
hound the object to these subjects. The memory becomes . movmg, . affectIve,
only to the extent that it becomes ind�pendent o� th� �ubJect�, bec�mes less
recognizable through its participation m an extra-mdlvldual dllnensIOn. .
Freud and Lacan both associate affect with movement. And Massurm,
following Deleuze, states that 'affect inhabits passage', adding this �etaphor:
.
i n the same way, 'an excess of activity over each successive step' co nstltutes the
'momentum of walking'. 6 Just as walking would grind to a halt If. there were
no excess of movement over and above the simple addition of o�e step t?
another, so, too, would signification and thinking stop dead in thel� tracks If
thought did not exceed the simple succession of signifiers or logical steps.
Each step, signifier or thought must not merely follow its antecedent, but
emerge from within it. That Freud tried to theorize this movement �f thought
by insisting on affect's displacement is a truth nearly lost on hiS read�rs,
mainly because he reserved the much-maligned word 'discharge' to descnbe
the process. Attempting to forestall this casualty,. La.can rescues th.e word fr�m
the biochemical context that obscures Freud ,s mSlghts, emphatICally statmg
in Television that 'What affect discharges is not adrenalin but thought.'7
Affect is the discharge, the movement, of thought. If readers of :reud,
blinded by the word 'discharge', failed to see that it was the term by which he
attempted to theorize affect as the movement o� thoug�t, �eaders of Lacan,
blinded by the word 'signifier', were misled mto belIevmg that he had
neglected affect altogether. Counting only signifiers among the elements of
his system, they saw no room for affect, never noticing that on� of these
signifiers, the one Freud called Vorstellungrepriise� tanz, was no� lIke all the
rest. If it has a 'signifying' name, nevertheless, thiS IS. because It deslg . ates
�
not something other than the signifier, but the sigl:ifi�r's o�hern�ss .to Itself.
In brief, it names the inner displacement of the slgmfier, ItS mlsahgnment
with itself. We become estranged from our memories and thoughts becau se
the signifier, hence thought, can be estranged from i tscl r or call o v i n new
m e a
direction.
 L MONTH 97
96 T H E S I L E N T PART N E R S M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I O NA

. ' I oth words in the ultra-modern, advanced capitalist

accordance WIth It. longer in com­
the pleasure prmClpr
� .
e and th� reality principle are noThe
i ll
Anxiety: Sister o f Shame wor. ld,. , b ut have merged to clorm a k'md 0f corporation. image Freud
petitIOn . al't1 b the pleasure pri ple, wh'lCh
nci
It sometimes happens, however, that thinking does grind to a halt, stops paints is of a fnendly . takeovero fb��e rInt; for the global cyber-city o� its
�
moving, becomes inhibited. At these times movement is reduced to agitation, presents the former WIth a set nde sl�de f this merger' As the twentIeth
a kind of inexpedient-tentative running in place. When this happens, affect is dreams. But Lacan stresses thepIa � �
n VIew °� science gave way todiffi dystopian
known by a more specific name; it is called anxiety. Before we can understand cen. tury wore on, an� the uto re cult to
affect in general as the movement of thought, it is necessary to understand . Ons, while capitahsm grew more muscular, it became mo
VISI mm e rearIty.
hold on to the idea that p1 �as�lple re had the power to progra telling
The reality (of the market) p�mCest an� w : l��s:res ought to be sacrificed
this specific affect, which is its obstacle, the arrest of thought. According to as 1 Hing the sho ts, the
one of Freud's formulations, anxiety occurs when what was repressed and �� �
should have remained hidden becomes visible. We are now able to revise this.
What erupts into awareness in moments of anxiety is not something that was
pleasure principle in what to m���:e� ��� �
to get the best retu�ns .o� thosef � � of pleasure by reality is still to be
One of the best e�lC �o�s 0 n of aura Benjamin writes as though aura
found in Walter BenJam� s not�. o means �f capitalist production, to bring
formerly repressed (since affect never is), but the disjunction that defines
displacement, which suddenly impresses itself as a gap or break in perception.
As Lacan will put it: anxiety is the experience of an encounter with objet petit was. destroyed when we egan, gYht us enough to know that it could not
a. Let us agree to suspend what we think about this object until we examine it thmgs c1 oser t0 us, yet. he tau
. sm, that aura a eared for the first time only WIt. h
in situ, in the setting Lacan gives it in Seminar XVII. have. existed bef� re capltah . t� lost. This loss, however, had a
Never more inventive than when speaking of objet petit a, the concept he ' , speClfically as t hat wh" lCh h ad en inte
capItal Ism een
touts as his major innovation, Lacan went so far in Seminar XI as to invent a rather odd effect, since the eradlcat lOn 0f the rvening existence b etw mo re
now
· s cr�a ted 'the unique phenomenon 0f a distance'logand a
rigid, indestructIble aura. H�� ar� �oss t�e difference between satisfaction
modern myth, the myth of the lamella, to showcase it. In Seminar XVII this us and thmg e t° nderstand this ic if not in th e
mythical lamella, a kind of anarchic, runaway organ, let loose from any
imaginary body that might contain it, undergoes some biotechnological terms Freud gave us: an ongmam � .' d b bein embodied or
n ob : �d, IS r�
tinkering; the little organ is made over into a small gadget or gizmo. The
neologism employed to designate this little genetically engineered device, this
anticipated and sati sfa ctio
�;:::�o lo�ger si�ply want, but
imagined in objects wit? a certa; sd��o�simply bring our fantasies close.r to
little nothing, is 'lathouse'. In Lacan's new ultra-modern myth, there is no want more of. Pro sthetic gods, . . remo delling by the market mto
.
With'm reach , we expenence thelf
heavenly sphere, naturally; it has been demolished. All that remains ofthe world reality, more . balized city
beyond the subject is the 'alethosphere', which is a kind of high-tech heaven, a ,
mise e n scenes 0 f the postpo
nement 0f deSlre. The gleaming' glo
laicized or 'disenchanted' space filled none the less with every techno­ erected in the aleth. osphere turns out[z]w to b e ruied ' sas in Fritz Lang's Metropoleft lIS,
'
ang, the placed in the bottom-
scientific marvel imaginable: space probes and orbiters, telecommunications by an occu1t, malmed wizard, Rot level of
1

corner of the University Discouye rse, t�e �aster, castrated, fallen to the
superegoic urgings to 'Keep on ge::l��e' p rinciples of reality and pleasure is
and telebanking systems, and so on. The subject is now a 'terminal' subject,
plugged into various circuitries, suited with wearable computers and fitted
with artificial, remotely monitored and controlled organs, implants. 8 In the . aletho. sphere, the mer b Jec · Patched into ThI a . surface
The myth is probably inspired by the section of Civilization and its Dis­ coextensIve WIth a. merger 0f su ' t and Otherwit h the Other. S mter-
.
. Clrc '
Ultr y, the sub J'ect 'int erfa ces '
contents where Freud speaks of modern man's capacity to remake himself netwo. rk of sOClal r WIt. h what 1's in Lacanian termiqu s referred
as 'a kind of prosthetic God', to replace every lost appendage or damaged face IS not. to b e confused� howeve " rface (which pretends to ant ate. the
organ with another, superior one endowed with fantastic powers.9 In this to as , extlmacy' . The not IOn 0f mte . ) IS. o 1 the most recent retoohng 0f
.
alethosphere ( alethosphere because this space and everything in it is built on psychoanalytic conceptIOn of thetlO .s
ubJect . n t :�ich Lacan repeatedly railed:
the demonstrable truths, rigorous and mathematical, of modern science) the that phenomenological assump su� . :��� �orporeal presence is engaged or
prosthetically enhanced, plugged-in subject does not need to flee reality in namely� that . the w�ole o� th; e O�her, ' directed in what is called [its ] total
order to indulge his pleasure principle, for he is now able to remould reality chiasmlCally mtertwmed WIt h h
 MONTH 99
98 T H E S I L E N T PARTNERS M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I ON AL
a
intentionality'.!O At a certain historical moment, that moment when the social
configuration Lacan calls the 'University Discourse' was first set in place,
following s�r�: 'I.t wo.uld
fac�, e,cstatlC· L1ke:V1s
:�:� ��� : st
: n s
� : ::t: �� t :��i:t� � ����
� ���� it has
reality - including man - began to be conceived as fully manipulable. Man obJ ect , he teIIs us, m e�£ect, tha . t it would be an underst. atement · to say of a level
. en te h an ob ect
came to be viewed as a being without foundation, without roots, or as so an object. For anx�ety is prenp1tatenyd bbJ.anct ��:� t�:�y actual object. And
intertwined with the Other as to be infinitely mouldable. This is the heart of of certainty supenor to th�t of: o� e � af�rmed by this figure of speech is
the conception of the cosmopolitical subject, nomadic, homeless man of the this is so despIte t�e fact t at t ent �u� IS, . rather, a surfeit of signification
world. Capitalism drives and profits from this conception of the malleability nowhere present m the sta�eme stated, by - once agm·n being under-
beyond what is explicitly sa;,d. Not
_

of man, but we have not yet said enough to know how it does so, how it gets
us to surrender ourselves to it, or what it is we surrender. The first point that stated , in and by a negatlOn. " 1. dea, the insistent affirmatlOn . 0f a negat·1ve
needs to be made is this: if the subject becomes conceivable as completely Far fro.m bei ng an ab stra ct .. .
a cen tral lact WIt h w lc
h· h mo der n phi loso phy and pohtlCS tnes to
intertwined with the Other, this is because modern science comes to be contrary IS . c .

historical proposition that everyth·mgt,

� gnp s. I noted e r r that the
conceived as universal, as having triumphed over and supplanted every other � om e o . he is without foundation, w!tho�
realm and every other form of truth. Man is totally taken up, then, without mcludmg man, IS rnalle:�;: implies that
. h ld be expected to reIgn, m
exception, into the Other ofthe scientific world.J l roots . .Det. r tori.ali a ion �e�:��eor �����rf:c��as asserted itself with such
Without exception? This is, of course, the interesting issue, and one Lacan the s�lent1�c;capItatIS� w � ;
t foundation', ' not without roots'.13
will persistently mine. According to a long tradition that includes Freud feronty . tha. n � hat ma � �: ' �ot wit hou
s of deterritorialization, time and
himself, anxiety is distinguished from fear on the grounds that, unlike fear, it Somethmg mSlstS on d1SruPfmg the progres
has no object. Anxiety is intransitive, while fear is transitive. Lacan goes time again. t from saying t�at one
against this tradition, however, to assert instead that anxiety is 'not without
!
that one is 'not without roots' is diffneren
ional traditio , a OS h e �:�� �
object'. Why? What does he gain by this? The standard criterion, 'with or ha�:o':'t ��70 me racial, ethnic or natwon t to say. Bu; �y �;y �f ��;
without object', offers a simple choice between two contradictory or mutually the turn to ' 1· denft1 y politics' are n t0 Laean's myth of the lathouses, ere. the
exclusive terms which exhaust the field of possibilities. Between the two there this critical difference, I want to returfrom t·1me to time in the aleth osph
is a strict boundary. The choice of one or the other (object or not) decides on non-ob·Jectl·fi ed 0bJ· ects that app .
ear
osp h ere ,· oted from every founda-
which side of the boundary the phenomenon is situated. Freud seems to Man, the prosthetic God of th1s aleth � time. to
have intuited that this boundary did not only divide fear and anxiety, but had . , ungrou�ded , thus malleab el or at one WI��:� � Other, but from
tlOn es, whlCh
. unters one of these lath ous
the potential to divide the scientific and reason from the unscientific and time, and WIthout warmng, h. e enco . . . .
rtwmmg 0f man and Oth er, the
irrational. And Freud did not want this. He never wanted his science, psycho­
analysis, to be construed as a study of irrational phenomena; the workings of
k h·l nxiety The ch1asmlC mteudd
;��. ��p;i�n �f �hehisfor�fouernda in the latter, � enly falters; �a� e gro;s �::f � pul le a
the psyche, no matter how troubled, did not fall outside the pale of science. d1s�ng�ged from tionless eXIstence m the Ot er, owed, h w­
s disruption is not foll ?
This is surely why Freud kept trying to model anxiety on some form of actual or md1fferent to h e Other's appealy. Thi rate d , mto
ev�r, by � retreat\rom the publicitnter in this moment is not the pri:acy o� a
of 'ple asu re-r eali ty inco rpo
threat, even proposing at one point a 'realistic anxiety' after which signal
o at we encou
anxiety might be patterned. The sentiment of anxiety is one of hard certainty,
and he felt no impulse to question it, to characterize that feeling as a delusion:
that is, to dismiss this certainty as unfounded, as having no basis in reason.
c
��
�;;;,�:� �:e :r ���in �he alethopu�pa;�
which we dIscover an overpo e p ,iC . ���:S t
y, :�: � � � :�
f m
a��� :��:�
Lacan's formula, 'not without object', is fashioned out of the same concern adheres to us. petit a, as lathouse, has more mechan
ical
as Freud's. The first thing to observe is that the formula has a definable It may .now b e aP arent why objetWit led, smo oth ­
conn�tat.lOns th an the lamella doe s. hin the seemingly well-oi mes the
rhetorical structure: namely, that of a litotes or understatement. Through the . a assu
rhetorical figure of litotes one expresses an affirmation by negating its functlOnmg aleth phe �, t�e n ossi ble, !l1 t h i c ol,jcl petIt
cha al t�li san cc, a loy- l ike , m ech anndi cal
contrary. If someone were to say to you, for example, 'I am not unhappy with character of a ma�}unc�. 1Omng : nic
mp le or slic h all ohje ct is rOll ill
the way things turned out,' you would be able to discern an affirmation of the thing that does not qUlte work . An exa
 101
1 00 M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I O NA L M O N T H
T H E S I LE N T PA RTNERS
our backs or scalps a defining
Charlie Chaplin's Cit;: Lights. In this film, the little tramp - who merely wants ('verything transpires as if we bore engraved on
to blend seamlessly mto modern city life, to give himself over to it - is mark we could not read or even see) .
th�arted by the i.mpor�unate sound of a whistle he previously swallowed,
whICh keeps c.allmg hIm back to himself. In an early text, On Escape, with Sartre and Lacan
E��anuel LevI�as d;aws our attention precisely to this scene, proposing that Riveted to Jouissance: Levinas
thI.S mg�sted whIs�le triggers t�e scandal of the brutal presence of [Charlie's] es the strong poi?t t� at the
bemg : It works lIke a recordmg device, which betrays the discrete mani­ his commentary on Sartre's voyeur, Lacan mak
f�statIOns, �f a �resen�e th �t Charlie' � legendary tramp costume barely dis­
In
gaze that 'assaults [the voyeur] from behat ind' (to recall Deleuze s dIsmIssal �f
sImulates : ThIS whIstle IS the eqUIvalent of Lacan's objet petit a in the this idea, as mentioned above) , or lookbrin s him from a place he cannot see, IS
technologICal fi�ld of modernity. If Charlie cannot be totally absorbed into the voyeur's own, not another's. This gs Lacan's read�ng close t� that of
t�e world of hIS surroundings, this is because he is, in Levinas's phrase Levinas: the gaze that looks at me is thatsion of my own bem g, t? wh�c� I am
riveted. But Lacan goes further in his revima t that of Sartre, and thIS reVISIOn has
' �IVeted to his being', and thereby uprooted from the uprootedness of modern t�� gaze �u�t always be
hfe. no precedent in Levinas. Sartre is adasenSIble ?
form . 7 If he mSIsts that the
As Levinas puts it, in the capitalist world, where man feels himself 'liable to 'manifested in connection with . . . a r sensible disturbance, is necessary
be mobiliz�d - in ev�ry sense of the term', there insists nevertheless a palpable accidental sound of rustling, or some otheFreud before him - does not want
�ounterw�Ight, a dIsturbance that lends our 'temporal existence ' " the to evoke the gaze, it is because he - likery pheno enon. L can wou�d conc�r
m�xpressIbIe fl�vor of �he absolute . . . [and gives rise to] an acute feeling of anxiety to be confused with an imagina the feelm �
g of anX
�
Iety to anse, b.ut IS
beI�g held fa�t , or bemg able to desert or escape being. In other words, that a sensible expe rien ce is requ ired for
IS

Lev�nas assocIates. th� feeling of being riveted, of the inescapablity of being, reluctant to attribute this experience tos itselaccident in the same way. Is It an
to hfe .under capitahsm, as though the counterweight preventing us from accident, he asks, that the gaze manifest f at the very moment the voyeur
?ecommg totally .absorbed within the universal world of capitalism also acted, peers through the keyhole? . sus-
.IdentICal
n has a trac eabl e provenan ce. An alm ost
m some p�radoxI�al way, as the driving force of our full participation in the Lacan's suspicio
latter. I wIll examme this proposition in a moment, after saying a bit more picion is voiced by Freud in one of hisaccu case studies. When a young woman
about the central concept of this text. patient of his makes the delusional sation that her lov�r has planted
The �hrase 'riveted to being' is revealing. Rather than simply and immedi­ hidden witnesses to photograph their love making in order to �Isgrace her and
force her to resign her position, he question s her clos�ly and d�scovers that the
� b�mg our being, coinciding with it, we are ineluctably fastened, stuck to
tely ific aCCIdent. Lymg half-dressed
It. - or It to us. (Levinas describes this being 'adhering to' us, just as Lacan, in onset of the delusion coincided with a spec rd a noise like a click or a beat'. It
hIS �wn myth �f th � lamella, describes the object as 'sticking to us'.) The beside her lover, the woman suddenly 'hea rpreted as that of the camera photo­
sentIment of b.emg nveted to being is one of being in the forced company was this click which the woman later inte ng, Freud does not doubt that
O! our own bem?, whose. 'brut�lity' consists in the fact that it is impossible graphing her and her lover. From the beginni that he cannot belie:e that had
eIther to assume It or to dIsown It. It is what we are in our most intimate core there was a click or beat, but he does an'sprotest
that wh� ch singularizes us, that which cannot be vulgarized and yet als� the 'unlucky noise' (which the wom lover identifies as commg from a
th�t whIch we cannot recognize. We do not comprehend or choose it, but clock on the far side of the room) not occu rred, the delusion would not have
neIther can w� get rid o.f it;, sin �e it is not of th � or?er of objects - but, rather, formed. After further speculation, however , he summons up the coura?e to go
of the ,not-WIthout-obJect - It cannot be obJectIfied, placed before us and 'further in the analysis of this ostensibthatly real "accident." ' . He now rIsks the
t�at there
� clo �k ever tIC.kedherorlym
confronted. following hypothesis: 'I do not believe an, sthSItu ation I that IS, g half­
Th� sentiment of b�ing doubled by an inhuman, impersonal partner, was a noise to be heard at all. The wom of a knock or beat � n her .clitoris. And
who IS at t�e san:e tIme me and disquietingly alien, is, of course, the naked on the sofa] justified a sensationject as a perc cp t lOn ot an ex tern al
psychoanalytIC eqUIvalent of Levinas's sentiment of being riveted. In each it was this that she subsequently pro ed
case we feel ourselves 'enclosed in a tight circle that smothers'I6 (in each case object. >l8
 MONTH 1 03
M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E l\1 0 T I O NA L
1 02 T H E S I L E N T PART N E R S
brO��ht with it a sense of mastery rathweer tha
. n this
Lacan follows Freud in rejecting an explanation that would link the onset ' ht hav�
in everyd�y hfe , mIg beg in . to
instead of breathing freely,
of the delusion of being photographed, in the one case, or the feeling of being "ense of mescapable anXIety. Iyt pro . at otherness This sense of bem g
asphyxiate in the air of an ave: u 'ssanXlm
?/an embarr�in
gazed at, in the other, to an accidental external sound. Yet, like Sartre, Freud ssed enchain men t to
and Lacan both insist on locating a sensible cause for the uncanny sense of overburde. ned and doubled by ) o. l, af cbe,em g 'encl osed a tight circle that
being observed by another. The sensible disturbance for Freud and Lacan, an exceSSIve body, or (on.ce agam)af the encounter with our own jouissance,
however, is the subject's own surplus-jouissance, the libidinal knock or beat of smothers', is the a�tomatlC resuIt can now state _ as the object-cause of our
the signifier on some part of the body. We summarize the difference Lacan with jouissance in ItS status - we
introduces this way: while Sartre likens our sudden awareness of the presence desire.
of the gaze to the opening of a kind of drain hole in our world,19 James Joyce,
in 'The Portrait of an Artist', identifies this drain hole with the obscene sound Anxiety Is Not Simple
it makes: 'Suck!' Joyce thus approaches more closely Lacan's view. And in
retended it was simply anxiety
relation to Levinas's argument, we can now make the point that the being
to which we are riveted or stuck is, specifically, jouissance. It is our own � �� �
Hitherto � have s :�l � �a �:� ��:�:ht,a;t !iety h as almost imperce?tibly
h. e
jouissance which cannot be escaped, got rid of, even though we never manage that was m ques 1 d hame anxiet or guilt and shame, m the
nx1 y
ing. Let :: take the last first. truth,
ral
sha�ed o�er int.o mo � � fol
vanous dISCUSSIons we ave ee;; er;ow
to claim it as our own. It is jouissance that not only singularizes us, but also In
doubles and suffocates us. If in the crawl space of our solitude we bump up
Sartre did not define t�e en�oun�so WI 'th the gaze as an experience only of
against an otherness that refuses to leave us alone with ourselves, it is because one .of shame And Levinas did not-
of jouissance that we can say - as Sartre says of the Other's gaze - that 'pure monition' or anXIety, . ut � tedasto bem �s nausea or anxiety
it 'delivers me to myself as unrevealed.'20 Jouissance makes me me, while define the experience of bemg nvet s . y
g anI
sea' 2 l _ but also
e
preventing me from knowing who I am. 'this fact of being riveted .con�titue �IS ��u�pr:���l�t�: �:� of being riveted
as shame: 'What appears m s am xie 1. 0 t aI when
This is what we have thus far: Freud's half-clothed patient reclined in an
erotic attitude beside her lover; Chaplin's little tramp in his legendary cos­ : :
to �neself.' 22 The conflatio� of a���3��:��: ���a� � � s � c��;ronted :;
tume; a voyeur peering through a keyhole. All three, concentrated in some Levmas says, for exampl e, th e p .
activity, are caught off-guard by a disturbance (audible in all three cases) that with itself . . . is the same as nausea een nausea and shame is a brief moment
Th e onIy gap. Levinas opens b etw. pe.
thwarts their willed concentration, seems to come from outside, from some . gm ' e we mIght be able' thro.ugh plea. sure, etoisesca
other place, but actually comes from the very core of their being. In each case of hope in whIch we 1ma . er:t �f thIS � re, h
mtm in his
the disturbance functions as a counterweight, an unexpected resistance that Sha me simply underscores the disappoesca �
pe IS 1mposSl e, t�a�we
; ema in
. , the affective recognition that
VIew as our
causes a swerve in the main flow of activity. Freud speaks in his essay 'On thing we cannot assume
Narcissism' of an easy exchange between object libido and narcissistic libido, tethered, without any h ?pe �f escape, to som:ts wa s with Levinas. For Lacan,
:;
own. It is precisely t th�s p�mt th�t� t��� or esc:ping being but, rather, of
as though the one could be converted into the other without loss. But at a
certain point he insists that there is a residue of non-convertible narcissistic :
it is not a .matter a� go�ng ey'0nAs IS. weII known , in his later work Levinas
.
libido that does not enter into the exchange, the back-and-forth flow. At transtormmg aur relatlOn to It. oin 'behind' being, as it were, proposmg
e e b
the point of disturbance, the moment of anxiety, it is this non-convertible
:� ; � \
:� h��a��:rat� n :�h t����h�� ���: ont��t�r�� i��i�� ::� ��; ; ;� ;�����!�:�
;,��; �� ;���;�:�;'
narcissistic libido - this jouissance which cannot be vulgarized or distributed
- which we encounter.
Outside the experience of anxiety, this inalienable remainder of narcissistic :
o
�:�:: �, �: �:� : : , ��; ,:;:;y�
:::�: : h:,��"��:
,
proposes m makmg 1 , arg ' m ontology's 'pre -co mprehens ion' of the
libido is never directly experienced but remains hidden behind its object­
libido 'emanations', or behind our absorption in the activities and objects ont logy per se, but an esca. pe fro. bJe
'
. " g, I . ,
ethical rcl,l l lo\l Iow anI ' I)elll
subject. For Lacan, shame IS th e su ct's
a S lIS

in which we are concentrated. One might have imagined that the direct
experience of this surplus, this abrupt uprooting from our rooted absorption own and the other's .
 MONTH 105
M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I ON AL
1 04 T H E S I L E N T PA R T N E R S

subject who must support the weight is at risk of annihilation, of being

An analysis of shame will have to await a� ex�mmatIOn " of the pressure to hc
the unrealized. This makes anxiety
, kvoured by the very insubstantiawelitycanofonly depart' ,26
I

take flight that accompanies anxiet Y'f'and �f t e flight path carved out by guilt . which
Anxiety is not only the feelI'ng of su IocatIOn that accompames ' th e encounter ' i l l C supreme instant from hin moments
, but the felt need to escape It.
, bemg, , anxiety as an 'edge' This disc uss ion of the em ergence of an 'immemorial past' wit Levinas's
wIth ' Lacan descnbed
o( anxiety permits me to observ
e an intuition that barely surf s in
ace
to relate to
phenomenon in the semmar ' he devated to the concept; Levmas ' called it ng riveted' seems som etim es
iext, where the sentiment of 'beiion t that
a

'limit situation' ,24 Edge , II'mI't , af wh at, S orne surplu s, I have b een arguIllg, ' identity. The imm em oria l pas
asserts itself in the field of the Other, a;d thus prOVIdes issues of race, ethnicity and nat alalso reawakens me to the fact that I was
�

' the s�bject with an

opportunity to break from the gn,P o �he Other, from the mtersubjective �,hadows me and compels my anxiety choose, but which chose me. That this
, WhIC, h It catches us up And yet, ' so £ar as horn into an identity that I did nt not
relations the Other defines and III the argument is verified when, in bet the first
th'IS surplus evades assimilation b us it b'��d�:��' n turn III
', III

i ntuition doe s ind eed subtly hau ilar ity ween

a� even stron�er, d reveals a striking sim
more terrifying grip. Anxiety re:trains t of the wnter, preventmg annotation to On Escape, Jacques Rolylan sam e yea r, 5. In
an essa Levinas wrote in the these sentences:
her from composing her thought:�. �'t :t:�� th. e swo�� of Hamlet, preventing
193
I he language of this text and te
'The Religious Inspiration of thethrAlli ance', Levinas wro
him from avenging his father' It n ImmobIlIzes the protagonists of oug h which Judaism has had to pass . . . .
'
that postwar cinema whI'ch Deleuze deSIgnates the ' cmema . af the voyeur' , 'Hitlerism is the greatest trial . . . ish becomes a fatality. One can no longer
' h '
converting the would-be actIOn eroes mto passlVe wItnesses of an ' , The pathetic destiny of being Jewted to his Judaism .' And also these: a youth
,
mcomprehensible and un assimilable event. �ut It' was. the paralyses of the flee it. The Jew is ineluctably riveerings and joys of the nations to which it
hysterics that led to the most famo��d'I�nOsis o� the aIlment of anxiety. For 'definitely attached to the suff lity of Hitlerism all the gravity of being
the conclusion Freud reaches regar g t e hystencs hold� true for all cases of belongs . , . discovers in the reamitive symbol of race . . . Hitler recalled that
,
anxious .paralysis: what its. sufferers su f'ler from are remlmscences. Jewish'; 'In the barbarous and27pri
::
Wh I�:o e �es� remmlscen�e� at this point, after all the effort expended
, one does not desert Judaism.> ces is indeed eerily similar to On Escape's
The phrasing of these senten , as Rolland translates it, 'the existent is
thus f:r c n 1l1cmg you th at It IS the sub' ect' s ow� defimng ' o,r narcissistic
jou�ssance which provokes her anxiet�? elf" wh at IS the relatIOn between description of the manner by which r in which one is riveted to one's bei ng.
jOUlSSance as the intimate cor��f b�mgh the obJect-cause , of desire, and compelled to its existence', the manne fuse the racist, ant i-Se mit ic vie w of
reminiscences? In that anxious m � t� en we encounter the very core of It is none the less a mistake towitcon experience of bei ng rive ted to the
�
our being, we encounter ourselves n i egger, s language, as gewesend - race invoked in Levinas's essay e hofthe one 's being. For, in the experience of
enjoyment that composes the cory of being chained to an enjoyment that
that is to say, as being the one who ;hus has :en. If the moment of anxiety is
experienced as one in which e are �ncann,Ily d�ubl:d ,by an alien and yet anxiety, one has a sense not onl also of the opacity of this enjoyment, its
intimate other, this is, because ;e con rontatIOn wIth jOU1SSance as the ' arIgm ' . outstrips and precedes one, but ility, which is dependent, I have argued,
of [ our] own person confronts a doubled or Dorked tIme ' where1 who I am in incomprehensibility and unassumab actual, in a 'thrust-aside' past tha t never
the present converges with who I was m ' the past The unaSSImi " ab'l'
I ity of the on its being grounded in nothing the i-Semite, the situ atio n is diff erent:
.
expenence is due to the fact that th'� past IS" not a modality of the present, took place. In the envious eye ofto hisantjouissance, but if this jouissance is
of actual or realized events that 0nce aPPened, ? ut, rather, of 'that portion of the Jew is, to be sure, riveted the anti-Semites, not (the latter is convinced)
the powers of the past that has been thrust aSIde at each crossroads where opaque, it is so only to others, to s reduces the Jew to just one pole of the
[ actual events] made [their] choices'.25 to the Jews. The anti-Semite thu and inhibiting indecisiveness that con­
In other words the ed e on wh'lCh anxiety ' t�uches is that of the unrealized, oscillation between the certainty able tension occasioned by the certainty
solv
the 'thrust-aside" power� of th e past that mIght have caused my personal stitutes anxiety, the painful, irreoss
and the imp ibility of knowing what one is call ed to.
h'Istory or history tout court- and thus me to be otherwIse. , I am tempted to that one is call ed om plic ate d com­
ng a Jew is an unc
, But according to the anti-Semite,to bei
_

say that this past is a burden that can never be laId to rest, but the everyday a Jew, and can not be oth erw ise . He
meaning of 'burden' would be strame , d here - less because the '1'Ightness ' of pulsion; a Jew knows what it issiblebefate which has cho scll h i m , I n b ricf,
lives his life serving the irremis
a

unrealized events and actions belies the 'heavmess ' , of burdens than because
 M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I O N A L M O N T H 107
1 06 T H E S I LENT PART N E R S

that sounded more like an investment strategy, whil e what Freud frequently
Jew. is a J�w, not only irremediably but immediately - this according to the itself for originary anxiety. The
antI-SemIte. referred to as 'moral anxiety' substituted pelle d to flee was no longer his
danger from which the Rat Man felt com nary ety, but a hostile and
unassumable narcissistic enjoyment, as in origiflee - anxi the superego by obeying
obscene superego. One flees - or attempts to or by bank ing one's 'jouissance
its commands to enjoy in a productive way, come in a new, improved high­
Moral Anxiety

In Seminar XVII, Lacan claims that anxiety is the 'central affect' around which credits' in anticipation of some 'cash out' to of a foreign, surplus-jouissance
every social arrangement is organized; every social link is approachable as a tech future. You see what happened: the rat table, accumulative surplus­
respo? se to or transforma�ion of anxiety, the affect which, as we have noted, has been exchanged for the florins of a coun of having - or, more
�un�t��ns as a counterweIght to existing social relations. The intolerable value; a question of being converted into a problem
mhI,bltIOn, . th� debilitating helplessness induced by the encounter with precisely, of having more. spectacle, something to be
one s �wn Joulssance, �ust admit of some escape if society is to be possible. In the Rat Man's mirror, jouissance becomesasawell a kind of merit badge
Opposmg the . AnalytIC to the University Discourse, Lacan opposes the seen not only by the Rat Many but by others bein, g reminded of 'The
respo? se or eXIt strate� ?t, the latter in terms that bear ominously on the that announces his value . One cannot help period Seminar XVII
q�estIons of race, ethmclty and national identity ilt which Levinas's text Impromptu at Vincennes', which took place duripngofthe stud ents that they were
hI?ted. The ques.tion now is: in :vhat kind of response does the University was being delivered, where Lacan warned a grou ding their zealous enjoy­
DIscourse, the dIscourse Lacan lInked to the rise of capitalism, consist? A playing the role of helots, serfs of the state, by para y 30 Ther e is compulsion
scene . from ps�choanalytic literature gives us some insight. The curious ment for all _ especially the state - to see and enjo not
.
the same compulsion
behavIOur mamfested in this well-known scene by Freud's patient' the Rat in this display of enjoyment-as-identity, but d abov e that in
experienced in the state of originary anxiety. I nnote
On Escap e,
Man, occurs at a time when he s betw een the sentiment
Levinas suggested that an intimate connectio exist see mor e clear ly why this
was working for an examination and toying with his favourite phantasy that his of being riveted and capitalism. We can now the mark . The prob lem is
father was stil� alive a?d might at any moment reappear. [The Rat Man] used to connection is made and how, finally, it missesand mor al anxi ety, anxi ety
arrange that hIS ,;orking hours should be as late as possible in the night. Between that Levinas fails to distinguish originary formation of anxiety - the
twelve and one clock at m. ?ht he would interrupt his work, and open the front and guilt. For capitalism is founded on a trans transformation is under­
0

door of the flat as though hl� fath�r were standing outside it; then, coming into
. he would take out hIS pems and look at it in the looking-glass.28 originary feeling of being riveted - into guilt.leThis
condition of anxiety, but in
the hall, taken in an attempt to escape the unbearab insat
doing so it indentures the subject to a crueon l, iable superego and to a
What w�s .the. R�t Man trying to glimpse in the mirror? That bit of surplus the contrary, compulsively
or �arClS. �IstlC JOUlssance-being to which he felt himself, in his bouts of past that is no longer immemorial but,
anxle�y, rIveted. If �e could assure himself that this jouissance-being were here memorialized. the sentiment of being riveted
no� m front of hIm, r�flected in this mirror, then it would no longer be We were pursuing hints in Levinas's text that thos e forms of identity which
behmd, an u�readable hleroglyph occupying his blind spot. He could grasp it, was connected to the question of race, and all conn ection is suggested in
possess �. t, whICh ,:ould mean It no longer possessed him; that is: he no longer are ours by virtue of birth rather than choice . This
or bein riveted as the feeling
g
had t� IdentIfy . hlmself with it in its status as unassumable, foreign thing. relation to a specific characterization of anxietyation this sentiment to
What mt�rposed Itself. between the Rat Man and his anxiety, Freud explained, of being burdened by a 'non-remittable obligdebt is '.a From shor t step, but to take it
.
was a prInclpl� of renunciation that took shape around the patient's father, that of being weighed down by an inexpiable
rsed lead s propriate
without being aware of the distance traveThat
to the inap
and :v�s expe�Ienced as the internal voice of conscience. This voice uttered mak es the error of
. conflation of originary and moral anxiety. bei n gLevri iveted w i t h exp er ie nces
nas
prohIbItIOns m the form of demands for implementable cost-benefit
�ssess�e��s: 'What sacrifice am I prepared to make in order to . . . ?'29 The too quickly conflating the experience of Il1l1c h as t he cf fl'd iVl'll l'sS of t h l"
ImpOSSIbIlIty of escaping jouissance-being was transformed into a prohibition of culpability and debt proves nothing so
 1 08 T H E S I LE N T PA RTNERS M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I ONAL M O N T H 1 09

s�perego, of guilt, in the m?dern world. Why should our admittedly infran­ IOle of agent to accumulated knowledge. This impro:es on Freud by locating
?Ible .attachment to that whIch precedes us and drenches our enjoyment in its I he authority of parental interdictions in a wider SOCIal
source. .
�ndehb� e colours b � characterized as a guilty one? There is no good reason for The Lacanian reidentification of the agent of power also permIts us to see
It; but If the equatIOn of the past with guilt and debt is endemic to modern lllore clearly what happens in the transfo rmation of anxiety into guilt. Freud
thoug�t, it is because the superegoic evasion or recoil from anxiety retains so described the power of the superego as that of prohibi tion, speci�c�l.ly the
mu�� mfluen�e over thought, up to and including Freud's. Critiquing the 1 1rohibition of jouissance. But Lacan sees this po er
:v � le s as a prohIbItIOn of
famlhar FreudIan myth of the murder of the primordial father by sons who dI
jouissance as such than as prohibition or, better, � � � solu IO or blockag e of the
try to . atone for their crime by reinstating him in an idealized form (as d isturbing enigma, the enigma of being, whICh ]OU l SSance poses . . The
:r ?es
f .
anXIety ams
all-Iovmg and loved by all), Lacan disentangles gUilt from originary anxiety, unmistakable and baffling certainty that forms the ground �
and prepares the way for an alternative escape from the latter. i n guilt in favour of a pursuit of knowle dge. Let me rel terate thIS pomt:
Wh at is the point of Lacan's critique? This myth of the father underwrites but also . the relentles
mto
certainty is transformed not only into knowle dge �
the reign .of the �uperego. The first thing one needs to recognize is that the pursuit of ever more knowledge. The 'inexpressible . flavour of the ab�ol�te
superego IS no�hmg oth�r than that very narcissistic jouissance - jouissance as which Levinas discerned as a feature of temporal eXIstence under capltahsm
the core of ? emg - WhICh we encounter in anxiety, in an altered form. The finds its explanation here. For the 'acute f�eling of bein� held fast' no longer
transformatIOn that produces it could be described as the conversion of comes as Levinas indicates in his confUSIOn - from bemg stuck or doubled
by a jouissance we cannot assume because it remains opaque to us �ut, rather,
_

a force (that of jouissance as core of being and object-cause of desire) into a

power (t�at of the su perego) . What is the difference? Steven Connor puts it
thIs. way: For somethmg we want to call a power, there is a notion of an agent
that precedes and deploys the power, a who looming through the what. A
force, by contrast, exerts itself, and exerts itself on itself.' The difference
between force and power lies, in other words, primarily in this distinction
betwee.n exertion, which does not imply any wielding or willed coercion of
one thmg by another, and exercise, which does. 'A power is exercised as one
exercises a right, or one's right arm, a prerogative or property, something
apart from ourselves.' Power 'possesses its own potentiality' while force
crucially, does not.3! T?e old ter� :ph�llomorphic power is pre�ise; for to sa;
that power possesses Its potentlahty IS to say that it is wielded in order to
i m print itself, its form, on external objects. Power seizes possession of that on
which it is exercised, it realizes itself in its objects by appropriating them,
stamp1l. 1g them with its identifying mark. Creation, on the other hand, is a
force, not - properly speaking - a power.
The painfu� split - 0: tension - experienced in anxiety gives way in moral
. or gUIlt, to a dIfferent sort of split, one more easily imaginarized by
anXIety,
dramatiS. personae engaged in a power struggle. In fact, the second topology of
Freud, in w.hich he thinks the psyche as a struggle among agents - ego, id,
superego - IS to a large extent the result of his increasing fascination with the
� uperego. The feeli? g of guilt is the sentiment that a power - the superego -
mternal to the subject and acting on him or her is exercised by an external
agent. Freud thought of this external agent as parental interdictions that had
been internalized by the subject; in Seminar XVII, Lacan instead attributes the
from being riveted to the pursuit of ideals and goals we cannot obtam because
they withdraw from us. . . .
To continue translating into the terms of the present dISCUSSIOn: gUIlt takes
flight from the enigma of our jouiss�nce-b�ing, no: from jou!ssance as suc�.
The guilt-laden, anxiety-relieved sU�Ject st�ll expenences JoulSS�nce: but thIS
jouissance is characterized by Lacan m Seminar XVII as a s?am , as co.unter­
feit' .32 The fraudulent nature of this jouissance has everythmg to do WIth the
fact that it gives one a false sense that the core of one's being is som�thing
knowable, possessable as an identity, a property, a � urplus-value attachmg to
one's person. Sham jouissance intoxicate� one WIth. the sense �hat all our
inherited, unchosen identities - racial, natIOnal, ethmc - root us m an actual
past that may be lost, but is not for all that inacces� ib:e in s� far as we can have
knowledge about it, and about how to restore �t I? an I�eal future : What
anxiety exposes as un graspable or unclaimable ]OUlSSance IS that whICh the
guilty shamelessly grasp for in the obsequ�ous r�spect they pay � o a past
sacralized as their future . The feverish purSUIt of thIS future - conceIved. both
as their due and as repayment of their (unpayable) debt to the past - IS the
poor substitute, the Sweet'n' Low, the guilty acceptance in the place of the real
sweetness of jouissance. . '
Let us permit ourselves a little surprise, however, at findmg that th� UnIver-
salizing tendency of the University Discourse � oes not e n � up forsakm g these
inherited identities or differences, but welcommg them WIth open arms, those
of the idealized father. At the moment the univers ity students stepped
forward on the political stage as presumptive actors, Lacan responded by
 1 10 T H E S I LE N T PART N E R S M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I O NAL M O N T H 111

agreeing with them that the university had ill-prepared them for the role. On I l lstice to the concept of shame, as I am doing elsewhere. I do not want,
the contrary, it had inducted them into the inglorious role of serfs of the I lowever, to end quite so abruptly as Lacan ends his seminar, so I will say a few
sup�rego, c?mpelled to add mortar to the thickening barricade against I !lore words - only. .
anXIety, agamst llie enigma it poses. Willi reference to their feeling of frater­ Alain Badiou has identified a dominant trait of the last century asthat Its
nity with the workers, he warned that we are always alone together, and that ' passion for the Real', its frenzied desire to rem?:re e,very. �arrier
t�e stu�ents ought to mind the gathering storm clouds of segregation already Irustrates our contact with the Real. If this has a famIlIar nng, It IS becausage ea
,
vlSlble the alethosphere . The mounting threat of segregation was a major similar diagnosis was proffered by Nietzsche, who compla ined that our
was one in which we sought to 'see through everything'. Nietzsche further
m

�oncern for Lacan during this period. He had written in 1 967, for example:
Our future as common markets will find its equilibrium in a harsher exten­ <'i1aracterized this passion as a lack of reverence or discretion, a tactless desire every
sion of the processes of segregation.' And in 1 968: 'We think that universalism ' 10 touch, lick, and finger everything'.35 The passion for the Real treats or a veIl
. . . homogenizes the relations among men. On the contrary, I believe that surface as an exterior to be penetrated, a barrier to be transg ressed,
what char�cterizes .our time . . . is a ramified and reinforced segregation that [ 0 be removed. The violence of this passion
insists in each penetr ation,
pr?duces l�tersectIOns at all levels and that only multiplies barriers.'33 He I ransgre ssion, and in remov al, which is only exacer bated by the f�ct that each
reIterated hIS concern about the rise of racism in his television interview a few arrives on the other side, only to find that the Real has fled behmd another
years later. Lacan's point was not that segregation would re-emerge in the harrier.
form of a return of the repressed, but that it was being positively fomented It is hard not to recognize in this the logic subtending the Univer sity
by the universalism of the uni�ersity and the occult power of the superego. Discourse as Lacan presents it in Seminar XVII. Nor is it difficu lt to see, in this
Sm�e 1 970 segregatIOl , lsm
, 'ontext that the antidote of shame which Lacan proposes also 'menta follows
l has mdeed returned in the form Lacan predicted,
cunously partnered rather than at odds with universalism, and with the �ietzsche's leads, in addition to Freud's.theShame is, as Freud
passion
put it,
for
a
the Rea �
l
.36
universities which became home to 'identity politics'. One of the most dam' against the 'aggressive instinct' or destructive
remarkable instantiations of this association in recent years has been, as Unlike guilt, shame does not seek to penetrate surface� or tear away .veIls;
Jacques Ranciere was the first to point out, the extension of humanitarian aid rather, it seeks comfort in them, hides itself in them as m a safe have� Our
to the very ethnic enemies with whom we are simultaneously at war.34 relationships to the surface change in shame, as compared to gmlt;dIty.
and profun , we
Here the logic of the psychic transformation we have tried to describe plays become fascinated with its maze-like intricacies, its richne ss
,
Itself out on t�� bIg, screen of world events. We shore up our increasingly This is where Lacan's hontology, his suturing of ontology and shame, comes
, ,
fractIOus Identities, exercise our rights in the name of identities we believe we in as if in answer to Levinas. Shame is not a failed flight from being,cebut a
fli�ht into being, where being - the being of surface s, of soci �l existe � : - is
? ossess, wh,ile locating our underlying 'humanity' in our basic impotence s of anXIety , whlCh nsk
m �eed of aid, our powerlessness before - what? Our own internal power. Our viewed as that which protec ts us from the ravage
feelmg of powerlessness, in other words, stems from conceiving ourselves as drowning us in its borderless enigm� . Un,lik� the �ight . or transf r
?�
l
ation
finally
of
possessors of power. guilt, however, shame does not sacnfice Joulssanc� s opaCity , � hlCh �
what 'keeps it real', True jouissa nce never reveals Itself t? us, It remaI �s ever
veiled. But instead of inhibiting us, this opacity now glVes us that dIstanc e
Shame Anxiety from ourselves and our world that allows us creatively to alter both; it gives us,
in other words, a privacy, an interiority unbreachable even by ourselves .
It is only against this background that Lacan's call to shame makes any sense.
HIS. IS, � rec?�mendatio� not �or a �enewed prudishness but, on the contrary,
for relmqUIshmg our satIsfactIOn WIth a sham jouissance in favour of the real Notes
thing. The real thing jouissance can never be 'dutified' controlled
- -

regimented; rather, it catches us by surprise, like a sudden, u� controllabl� 1 . Jacques Lacan, Seminaire XVII: L'envers de la pSYc/lII l llllyS(', text established by
blush on the cheek. It is not possible here, in this brief conclusion, to do Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 199 1 ) ,
 1 12 T H E S I L ENT PART N E R S M AY ' 6 8 , T H E E M O T I ONAL M O N T H 1 13

?
2. Lacan orrow� the concept o f the 'quarter-turn' from the mathematical theory 0 1
. ,I it attacks it from within, serving as evidence of the universal's inconsis
tency, its lack of
groups. I t IS mterestmg to note that there are eight such turns possible in group theory , I I identity. . .
.
smce the four ten:ns can be 'flipped' or 'reversed', like a sheet of paper; Lacan develops onl
halfof the pOSSIbIlItIe
. . ; . rhe form of negation to be found in the rhetorical figure of lItotes
IS clearly the same
s. Perhaps one of his followers will one day. . . . x, t hat which Kant calls 'indefinite judgement' .
3. Shame, and t� e blush to the face that is its most persistent sign, must be distinguished 1 3 . In his superb book Truth and Singularity:
Taking Foucault . in :o Phenomen� logy
I I )ordrect/Boston
from the other pas�lOns that reddened the faces and rhetoric of those who participated in /London : Kluwer Academ ic Publish ers, 1999), Rudl Vlsker several tImes
, , ',t'S the phrase 'not without roots' to describe
the events �f May 6S. Long before Lacan, Charles Darwin had designated shame (and its this same n�tion of an �ngrounded ground­
�ccompanymg blush) as the affect (and passionate sign) of the human subject as such. I I lg, but without excavati ng the Lacania n backgro und, whIch :
we obvlO':s y sha:e. .wr� o�n
Monkeys redden from passion,' he noted, 'but it would require an overwhelming amount 1 1 "'sis is very similar to Visker's; I want t.o thank Ji!1 � obbin s for recogl1lzmg thIS SImIlanty
lI l d recommending
. .
of evi?ence to make us b:lieve tha� any ani�al c uld blush.' Darwin, The Expression of the . this book to me while I was wntmg thIS chapter .
�
Emotlon� In A!an and Ammals (ChICago: Ul1lverslty of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 309. 1 4. Emmanuel Levinas, On Escape, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford, CA: Stanford
4. CIted m Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New York: I i n iversity Press, 2003), p.65.
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), p. 5 1 . 1 5. Levinas, On Escape, p. 52.
5. �ill�s Deleuze 'Michael Tournier and the World without Others', published as an 1 6. Levinas, On Escape, p. 66.
: (New York: Wash-
appendIx m The LOgl� of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press), 1 990, p. 305. 1 7. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes
6. Bnan MassumI, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, (Durham, NC I I l gton Square Press, 1992). .
. ' the psycho-AnalytIC The-
and London: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 2 1 7. 1 8. Sigmund Freud, 'A Case of ParanOIa Runnmg Counter to
7. Jacque� Lacan, Tel�vision: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, ory of the Disease', SE 14: 269-70. ,
e m psychoanalysIs " ,
ed. Joan Cop}ec, trans. Del1ls Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson (New York: 1 9. Jacques Lacan, 'The Function and Field �f Sp�ech and LanguagW.
W. W. Norton, 1990), p. 20. In this television interview, Lacan makes precisely the same I I I Bcrits trans. Alain Sheridan, ed. Jacques-Alam MIller,
(New York: W. Norton , 1977),
1 '. 47. This essay, commonly known as 'The Rome
pomts . ab�ut th� relatlO� between affect and displacement he makes in Seminar XVII. Discourse', was delivered, a� Rome
s Deleuze s powers
On Freud s notlOn of dIscharge as an attempt to theorize the movement of thought,
. . ( :ongress in 1953; Lacan's phrase 'the powers of the past' later become
see also MOl1lque Davld-Me�ard, Hysteria from Freud to Lacan: Body and Language in of the false'.
Psych? analysls, trans. Catherme Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1 989), 20. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 359.
especIally th� remar�a�le final chapter, 'Jouissance and Knowledge'. 2 1 . Levinas, On Escape, p. 66.
S. Lacan s d�scnptlon of the alethosphere, written as it was at the very end of the 1 960s, 22. Levinas, On Escape, p. 64.
now sounds a bIt quamter .
than the description I give; think 'Sputnik' rather than space 23. Levinas, On Escape, pp. 67-S.
pro�es. The :nyt� o� the �lethosphere an� the lathouses is presented in the 20 May, 1 970 24. Levinas, On Escape, p. 67. .
ge m psychoanalysIs ' , , p. 47.
sem�nar, whIch IS tItled Les sllions de I allithosphi:n! in the book published from the 25. Lacan, 'The Function and Field of Speech and Langua
semmar. 26. Levinas, On Escape, p. 67.
�. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, in The Complete Psychological Works 27. Levinas, On Escape, p. 75. . ' , , SE 10:204.
Is
of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey and Alix Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press
. 28. Sigmund Freud, 'Notes Upon a Case of ObseSSIOnal Neuros
and the InstItute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953-1974) (hereafter SE) 2 1 : 92. 29. Sigmund Freud, SE, 10: 2 7 1 . ,
10. Jacques Lacan, Seminaire X: L'Angoisse (unpublish ed), 26 June, 1963. 30. 'The Impromptu at Vincennes was translated mto �nglIsh
. '
?y J�f�rey Mehlm;m and
1 1 . Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis A, Analytl Con , m Lacan, L envers.
. published in Lacan, Television; it appears also as Annex
trans. Alan Shendan, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, (London: The Hogarth Press and th� , 'The Shame of Being a Man', http://w ww. bbk.ac. uk/eh/skclshame(
3 1 . Steven Connor
I nst Itute of Psycho-Analysis, 1 977), p. 71. This is an expanded version of the essay publis
.
he ? in Texu�l Practice 15 (200 1 ) . It IS
1 2: Feminists have always noticed tlrat tlrere is sometlring suspicious, a little too . explIcat es tire con�ept of the
l' n l p l rtc al, III t� e way � reud relates tire story of tire boy's sudden anxiety
interesting to note that in L'angOis se, Lacan sI :nIlarly
� to Images o� a
mother, s mlssm? gel1ltals. E:e�ytlring depen�s on a simple, naked perception without
IOns of cause tlra resort
at tire sight of the object-cause of desire by critiquing those concept l to WIll.
on some part of the body, such as an arm, conceIv ed as externa
will exercising itself oth�r
�ymb()hL l11 edlat!O � of her n:ISSI!1� pel1ls. .
�n L Angoisse, Lacan already employs the phrase, as forgetta ble as an umbrel la. In
not WIthout obJect , t rethmk thIS notonous scenario. He adds the necessary
This reduces the arm, Lacan argues, to someth ing
s one's arm only at a gym, where - it can be argued - one treats one s
? element of words one exercise
medIa t IOn bY contendmg th�t th w�ole scene plays out against the backdrop of a universal own body as an object external to oneself; one raises one's
arm, however, through the
P /() POSlt� O �l, No human bemg IS WIthout a penis. If woman, then, becomes a source of
, � ,
of one's will, which is inconce ivable as an externa l power.
exertion or force
of capitalist or super-
anxIety, It IS not because she gives direct evidence of a particular exception to a universal 32. Juliet Flower MacCannell highlights the counterfeit nature
r�i1c, but bec�use she is for the boy 'not without a penis'. What is affirmed is nothing egoic jouissance in her excellen � re adi g of the seminar ; see 'Mor � T�ought �n War �nd
VISI ble. The Imp? rtant pom� �. s that the negation of the contrary does not attack . �
the Death: Lacan's Critique of CapItalIsm m Semma r XVlf, forthco � mg �n Readmg Semmar
ul1lversal from WIthout, provldmg contradictory evidence of what falls out or escapes SIC Series, vol. 6 (Durham , NC: Duke Umvers lty Press, 2006).
from XVII, ed. Russell Grigg,